School report-card fixes affect voucher eligibility

Columbus school attendance scandal

Columbus City Schools employees -- and perhaps others in schools throughout the state -- are accused of falsifying students' records to improve their schools' standing on state report cards. Read the complete series.

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The Ohio Department of Education has extended the deadline for public-school students to apply
for private-school vouchers while it recalculates report cards from past years for schools that
altered student data.

Throughout a two-year investigation that has focused on student-data manipulation in Columbus
and other urban Ohio districts, many have asked how students were affected. This provides one
answer.

Corrected report cards likely will show that some schools that once appeared to be performing
too well to offer private-school vouchers should have offered them, a department spokesman said.
Some schools falsely inflated their academic standing by “scrubbing” students with many absences
and low test scores from their report-card calculations. Schools that perform poorly for two of the
past three school years can be deemed “voucher eligible.”

The students affected would be offered the chance to apply for a voucher now.

The deadline to apply for the state’s voucher program, called EdChoice, was to be today. Now, it
will be Sept. 5.

“We want to give students in those schools the opportunity to apply for scholarships and give
parents time to make informed decisions,” said Education Department spokesman John Charlton. He
said the department hasn’t calculated which schools will be affected or in which districts.

The state is recalculating report cards in a handful of districts including Columbus,
Cincinnati, Cleveland and Toledo and dozens of schools within those districts for the 2011-12 and
2012-13 school years. The department already has recalculated the 2010-11 report cards for six
other districts, but not Columbus. When it releases the redone calculations, Columbus will get
three years’ worth of report cards.

The district said yesterday in a written statement that it supports the department’s need to
recalculate report cards.

“Likewise, we also support their decision to extend the voucher-eligibility deadline in order to
ensure parents have the information and time needed to make the best choices for their child,” the
statement read.

Beard expects the new figures to show that East should have been voucher-eligible that year and
that his daughter should’ve been able to apply for a voucher. He performed his own calculations
early on and has fought for East to be examined.
He filed a civil lawsuit against the district, went to the state auditor and
even to police and prosecutors.
The
lawsuit was dismissed.

Vouchers are worth $4,250 for students in grades K-8 and $5,000 for high-school students.

During the 2010-11 school year, which has received the most scrutiny by investigators, 47
Columbus schools were deemed voucher-eligible. The state is recalculating that year’s report cards
for 93 Columbus schools by adding about 1,000 students back into district report-card calculations.
That year, the district had 116 schools, so nearly all of the schools will be issued new report
cards.